The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry are prob­ing a Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment pre-paid card plan which of­fered ben­e­fi­cia­ries a $510 one-off grant—but the 2,300 re­load­able cards were al­leged­ly in­stead sent to ben­e­fi­cia­ries with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of load­ing $30,000 dai­ly.

The plan, launched by the PP’s Min­istry of the Peo­ple in 2012, held mon­ey laun­der­ing po­ten­tial to the tune of $69 mil­lion per day, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox re­vealed dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the 2024 Bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

She said, “Ac­cord­ing to a PP gov­ern­ment Cab­i­net minute, the card was to be loaded with a max­i­mum of $510 but the ap­pli­ca­tion form and card were sent to the ben­e­fi­cia­ry with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of load­ing $30,000 per day.

“So be­tween 2012 to 2015—when cards were to ex­pire—there was po­ten­tial to laun­der $69 mil­lion if all 2,300 were loaded with the max­i­mum al­lowed.

“You know peo­ple like to say if you know some­thing, send it to the po­lice? Well, we did just that: there has al­ready been col­lab­o­ra­tion with the po­lice on the is­sue of po­ten­tial fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing ac­tiv­i­ties that may have tak­en place dur­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this deb­it card fi­as­co.”

Cox al­so de­tailed oth­er probes done by the min­istry’s In­ter­nal Com­pli­ance Unit (ICU) and TTPS to re­duce er­ror, fraud and cor­rup­tion with­in the min­istry.

For 2023, the ICU record­ed a de­crease in the num­ber of fraud and cor­rup­tion in­ci­dents with­in the min­istry.

“The clear ev­i­dence sug­gests that most of the cas­es ex­am­ined orig­i­nat­ed from pre­vi­ous fis­cal years.”

Cox added, “I want to draw your at­ten­tion to a deeply trou­bling dis­cov­ery, name­ly, of a pre­paid Mas­ter­card pro­gramme in­tro­duced by the PP gov­ern­ment led by the cur­rent Op­po­si­tion Leader.”

Cox said the min­istry in­ves­ti­gat­ed these cards, some of which were found in a cup­board in the So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion. She didn’t know the where­abouts of the oth­ers.

Cox said, “The pro­gramme was cre­at­ed by Cab­i­net Minute 2377-2012/0906 to al­low for the pro­duc­tion of 2,300 re­load­able pre­paid Mas­ter­cards for a one-time grant pay­ment of $510 com­menc­ing Sep­tem­ber 3, 2012.”

The Cab­i­net Minute agreed to pro­vide the one-off grant to a to­tal of 2,050 needy chil­dren, com­pris­ing 50 chil­dren to be iden­ti­fied by each of the 41 MPs. The grant was for the pur­chase of school sup­plies start­ing from Sep­tem­ber 3, 2012.

It then es­tab­lished that the Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment be re­spon­si­ble for an ad­di­tion­al 250 one-off grants of $510 for the al­lo­ca­tion to very needy chil­dren, in­clud­ing those iden­ti­fied from with­in the then min­istry’s data­bas­es.

But Cox point­ed out, “The ap­pli­ca­tion form ac­com­pa­ny­ing the cards stat­ed the cards could load up to a stag­ger­ing $30,000 per day! This sim­ple arith­metic re­veals an alarm­ing fact: 2,300 cards mul­ti­plied by $30,000 per day equals a po­ten­tial dai­ly sum of $69 mil­lion that could have been laun­dered through this pro­gramme.

“This in­con­sis­ten­cy be­tween the Cab­i­net Minute and the $510 one-off pay­ment and the con­tract/ap­pli­ca­tion form, which showed that $30,000 could have been up­loaded per day, is of sig­nif­i­cant con­cern!

“This isn’t just a fi­nan­cial fig­ure; it is a moral and eth­i­cal con­cern and a mas­sive red flag for fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety. The sheer vol­ume of funds that can flow through these cards is as­tound­ing!”

Cox said the cards were ad­dressed to named ben­e­fi­cia­ries and left ei­ther in the care of the So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion (SWD) head of­fice or some con­stituen­cy of­fices with the ap­pli­ca­tion form.

In­ves­ti­ga­tion thus far, she said, dis­cov­ered 40 cards still in the min­istry’s pos­ses­sion, ad­dressed to named ben­e­fi­cia­ries in care of the min­istry’s head of­fice or a con­stituen­cy.

Not­ing, how­ev­er, that the ap­pli­ca­tion form was blank, she said, “So, I don’t know how the name is on the card and the form is blank. The form al­so didn’t iden­ti­fy the $510. This rais­es con­cerns about trans­paren­cy and in­formed con­sent. Ben­e­fi­cia­ries may not have even been aware of lim­i­ta­tions on their cards, which could lead to un­in­tend­ed mis­use.”

Min­is­ter worked at bank which ap­proved cards

Cox, call­ing for an­swers, added, “Was this an av­enue for mon­ey laun­der­ing, as re­load­able pre­paid Mas­ter­cards can be used to move il­lic­it funds more dis­creet­ly and with­out de­tec­tion? Why did the PP gov­ern­ment in­tro­duce such a com­plex sys­tem that had the ca­pac­i­ty to fa­cil­i­tate a high lev­el of mon­ey laun­der­ing?”

Cox, who said she was PNM Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP dur­ing the pe­ri­od, added, “At no time did I par­tic­i­pate in or was aware of that card pro­gramme. It would ap­pear cards on­ly went to PP MPs.

“I called some of my col­leagues who were al­so MPs then, and they too knew noth­ing of such cards. So, we re­ceived none, yet the Cab­i­net note stat­ed all MPs were sup­posed to re­ceive 50 cards.

“And no ev­i­dence could be found in the min­istry on dis­tri­b­u­tion of these cards. But the cards were is­sued as we checked with the bank, so who re­ceived them?”

Stat­ing that the po­ten­tial for mon­ey laun­der­ing of $69M a day via the cards was sig­nif­i­cant and high­lights the sever­i­ty of risks as­so­ci­at­ed with the card, Cox added, “More con­cern­ing is that the min­is­ter who was fi­nance min­is­ter in the Cab­i­net then, was the past CEO of the bank that ap­proved these cards.”

Sim­i­lar 2014 scheme
al­so un­der probe

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox said a sim­i­lar scheme ex­e­cut­ed in 2014 is al­so un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. She said an elec­tion was called on June 13, 2015, by the PP gov­ern­ment. But the Cab­i­net went on to agree on Ju­ly 2015 to pro­vide 4,000 pre­paid cards “re­peat­ing the same scheme as in 2012 and 2014—where are these par­tic­u­lar cards now?”

Cox said re­load­able pre­paid Mas­ter­cards for a one-off pay­ment “de­fies log­ic”, as such pro­grammes typ­i­cal­ly come with ex­pens­es which she de­tailed.

“These ex­tem­po­ra­ne­ous costs would have been well known by the then fi­nance min­is­ter. It may have been more pru­dent to use any of the ex­ist­ing grant pay­ment meth­ods avail­able.”

Cox not­ed that the UNC’s Ch­agua­nas East MP would have spo­ken af­ter her in yes­ter­day’s Bud­get de­bate. She said that per­son had worked in the min­istry in 2012 in the same de­part­ment she’d re­ferred to.

Cox said ques­tions need to be an­swered.

“Why did the PP gov­ern­ment de­cide to is­sue a one-off grant pay­ment on a re­load­able Mas­ter­card to the val­ue of $30,000? Was this about serv­ing the peo­ple, or an un­der­ly­ing ne­far­i­ous agen­da lurk­ing be­neath the sur­face? Who were these cards tru­ly in­tend­ed to ben­e­fit from this scheme?”

She al­so queried if there was ma­nip­u­la­tion of ben­e­fi­cia­ries—mean­ing, ben­e­fi­cia­ries could un­know­ing­ly par­tic­i­pate in fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties.

“The card al­ready had names and then it was at­tached to an ap­pli­ca­tion form. Weren’t there oth­er ways that the regime could have pro­vid­ed the grant with­out cre­at­ing a re­load­able pre­paid Mas­ter­card?” Wasn’t there at that time an al­ready ex­ist­ing frame­work which had the nec­es­sary pol­i­cy, pro­ce­dures and con­trols to guide and fa­cil­i­tate this one-off pay­ment of $510? Was this deb­it card sys­tem cho­sen and pre­ferred to avoid scruti­ny, by­pass­ing re­stric­tions, con­trols, and au­dit­ing pro­ce­dures?”

Cox added, “As the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, charged with tak­ing care of the vul­ner­a­ble, I can­not and will not let this mat­ter and these lin­ger­ing ques­tions go to the wind.”